


Foreign Terrain

by ncfan



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Anxiety, Corrin's issues loom in the foreground, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Niles's issues loom in the not-so-distant distance, Post-Chapter 12 of Conquest, Pre-Het, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 10:02:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18333737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Corrin is anxious, Elise is still sick and can't get comfortable in her room, and Niles is himself (And kind of cryptic to go with it). It's a quieter night than you'd expect.





	Foreign Terrain

Though the residents of Macarath the town reappeared soon after the Hoshidan forces fled, Palace Macarath itself was still deserted when Corrin’s battered, exhausted party reached it. Either the villa staff had fled, or they had been executed when the Hoshidan forces took control of the town, and their bodies had been left somewhere out of the way. But Corrin did not think the latter explanation was the true one. Didn’t want to believe that that was the truth. Why would anyone just execute unarmed prisoners without cause?

Why would Nohr send the Faceless over the border into Hoshido?

Why would Ryoma be willing to let Elise die just to try to coerce Corrin into returning to Hoshido, when he must have known that, had Elise actually died, it would surely have embittered the war, rather than ending it more quickly?

How had Ryoma known to intercept her and her party in Macarath in the first place?

One thing, at least, was clear: The more Corrin learned of the world beyond the Northern Fortress, the less she understood. She did not know nearly as much as she had thought she did.

The villa being empty and the questions of whether the Hoshidan forces had fully withdrawn and whether they’d be coming back still open, the group was mostly encamped (if you could really call it that) on the ground floor of the villa. Someone had lit a bonfire in a sunken pit in a room Camilla had identified as a dance hall, and they’d spread their pallets out around it. The atmosphere was a relaxed one as evening fell, despite the fact that most of them had accumulated nasty scrapes and bruises, and some of them broken bones and badly dented armor, from the battle earlier that day. No one really regarded the idea of the Hoshidans returning as a serious possibility. _“Don’t fret, dear,_ ” Camilla had said to her, brushing a little dust from Corrin’s shoulder. _“Prince Ryoma didn’t bring_ nearly _large enough of a force to hold a city the size of Macarath. And that was before we got through with them. If they return, it won’t be for some time.”_

That hadn’t quite been what Corrin was concerned about, but she just… She couldn’t complain, and couldn’t confide. She nodded her head, and pretended that that had assuaged all her fears, instead.

There was another problem, not one so dire, but certainly one that was producing no small amount of disquiet.

Corrin had, still, little experience with meeting new people. It was hardly something she dreaded; indeed, most of the time she had spent in the Northern Fortress (what she could remember, anyways, and as of late she had found herself forced to think about that more and more, regardless of how little she wished to) had been spent longing for the day when she could leave it, when she could go out into the world and actually be a _part_ of that world. And Corrin had had more than enough lessons in etiquette to carry her through just about any new encounter without faltering too badly. (In Nohr, anyways. In Hoshido, her manners had been regarded as strange, looked upon by others with contempt or with pity.)

Dread at the idea of meeting new people was a foreign concept to Corrin. Instead, she was again this evening experiencing something she had never thought would be a problem for her while she was still living in (trapped in) the Northern Fortress, and was yet encountering virtually every time she met anyone new. She was feeling just a bit overwhelmed.

Honestly, it wasn’t even as bad tonight as it could have been. Laslow and Peri, the newest additions to their band, had expressed some interest in her—the question of just what Xander had told them about her was one that nagged at Corrin at the moment of their meeting, nagged at her now, and would likely continue to nag at her for the next several days—but after a few minutes they started to seem more interested in catching up with the others. (Well, at least in Laslow’s case; he’d gone off to a corner with Odin and Selena. Peri was sharpening a dagger, bright, sharp sounds against the whetstone.) And the others were either drowsing, reading, or broken off into smaller groups. It shouldn’t have been a problem for her.

It shouldn’t have been a problem. The act of meeting new people gave Corrin such a thrill that that thrill should have lingered past the moment of the first meeting. She should be better than this.

All of that knowledge couldn’t keep Corrin from feeling like her skin was about to jump off of her body, couldn’t stop her from feeling watched, feeling like the walls were too close, feeling like she was going to do something bizarre or otherwise out-of-place at any moment, even though she was sitting still and silent. She just…

She knew to keep quiet. She’d learned years ago not to keep a diary (not that she’d been able to put the knowledge into practice for a while), and she knew that so long as she didn’t speak of something on her mind and didn’t write it down, no one could be certain as to what was lurking in her mind. She knew that. It didn’t help.

She might have been able to speak of it with Azura, but Azura had collapsed into a deep sleep almost as soon as her head hit her pillow, and Corrin couldn’t bear to wake her. Couldn’t bear to risk her safety if the wrong person heard them speaking with one another. It was just… She could keep it to herself. It would pass, in time.

And she needed to get out of this room—dance hall, whatever. She needed to get away from that feeling of being watched, of being under observation, needed to get away from the thought that kept repeating itself over and over again in her head, in iterations that shot in jagged letters up to the sky: _why would they be watching you, why would you think that of your companions, why would they be watching you…_

If by any means escape was possible, Corrin would seek it out.

Her eyes lit on Azura’s pallet as she slipped out of the room, and the world splintered into a place where, this day, Corrin had faced Xander in battle, rather than Ryoma. Seeking the escape of sleep seemed entirely too reasonable, in Azura’s place.

Most of the party that had fought this day in Macarath were camped out on the first floor of the royal villa. Even those with injuries could be found there, though they were propped up on somewhat more pillows than those who had gotten off with scratches or nothing. Elise was another matter. She’d been given her medicine, mixed by Jakob and Azura when the villa apothecary couldn’t be located, and though she still looked a little ghastly, her fever had gone down considerably, and Jakob’s assessment was that she was no longer in any real danger of death. But she was still very weak, and sleeping on the floor, even with blankets and pillows between herself and the floor, certainly wouldn’t have been conducive to her recovery. What she needed was an actual bed.

(Azura was convinced that Elise’s illness was something she had picked up from the islands while they were departing Notre Sagesse. Corrin wasn’t so certain of that. She’d just read too many stories where a sudden, precipitous illness that everyone _thought_ had innocent origins later turned out to be a plot by a nefarious villain. Those stories she’d read, the ones she loved so much as a child, they weren’t always reflective of the way the world worked. She knew that. It still bothered her.)

The royal villa in Macarath had never been envisioned as a family residence, and thus the only bedchambers on hand were the one reserved for the king (and thus quite decidedly off-limits for the villa’s current residents) and the guestrooms scattered about the second floor. They weren’t as close to the campsite as Corrin or Camilla would have liked, but truly, the threat to Macarath by the Hoshidan forces had been judged (for this night, at least) to be rather low, and the guestrooms were well-furnished enough to serve.

Corrin supposed there needed to be someone on hand in Elise’s chamber, just to make certain she didn’t take a turn for the worse during the night. And yes, it did occur to her that someone else might have already come to the same conclusion, but if so, she supposed she could either spend a night in that chamber as one of three people sleeping there (a more manageable number than what currently occupied the dance hall), or try to see if that watched feeling dissipated when all or most of the people who could have been watching her were asleep.

Corrin would have thought Elise would be asleep. If anyone deserved to sleep for a week on a soft bed, it was certainly Elise. After the kind of day she had had, if Elise had announced that she was going to sleep for the rest of the _month_ , Corrin suspected she would have accepted it. Elise could have slept in one of the wagons in the baggage train, all the way back to Windmire.

When she pushed the door open, careful not to set the rusted hinges (how long had it been since this villa was last in regular use?) to screaming, she did not find her sister asleep. Instead, Corrin found Elise sitting up in the still, close darkness of the makeshift sickroom, propped up by the pillows Arthur had found in a nearby linen closet.

“Oh—I woke you.” As soon as Corrin was slipping into the room, she was backing out, her face hot with a sudden shoot of shame. “I’m sorry, Elise. I just…”

What stopped her was Elise shaking her head weakly. “Uh-uh.” Her voice was weak, still, but not the hollowed-out whisper of a few hours ago: _‘Gunter was there.’_ “I was already awake.”

“What?” Concern propelled her back over the threshold, onto smooth tiles clammy against her bare feet and into stale air that parted for her presence only reluctantly. “Elise, you need your rest.” A sudden cold flash left Corrin beating back nausea. “Are you starting to feel worse again?”

Elise just shook her head. She didn’t seem to have the energy to do much else.

Corrin hadn’t seen Elise sick very often. Another consequence of growing up in isolation in the Northern Fortress, away from her family’s home. Elise only traveled when she was in good health, and according to Camilla, Elise had always been possessed of _excellent_ health. (The blood had drained from Camilla’s face when Elise fell from her horse, so fast and so completely that her face has been as the face of a corpse. After they had beaten Ryoma back, Corrin suspected that all that had saved his life were the arrows the Hoshidan archers fired to bar Camilla from pursuing him as he fled.) Elise had occasionally come down with a cold during stays in the Northern Fortress, just once or twice, and she’d shaken them both off virtually as soon as they had taken hold.

In the face of that, Corrin looked at her sister, so small in that bed, and she felt no more comfortable than she had in the dance hall. A different kind of discomfort; the ghost of death was a motionless, smothering discomfort. She wouldn’t be driven from this room by it.

The silver pitcher sitting on the table by the bed was still cool to the touch as Corrin poured water into a by-now empty water goblet. “What’s the matter, then? If you need something, I can get it for you.” A nervous laugh jarred from Corrin’s mouth. “Just to hear it, it sounds as if Macarath has everything in the world you could want.” A shaky smile stole over her lips as she handed Elise the water goblet. “So I should be able to manage it.”

Elise took several greedy gulps of water before even attempting a reply. She licked water from her lips as if she was some desert denizen who had no idea when the next drop would come, and could not count on the skies to give relief. “I’m hot,” she muttered. “It’s too hot.”

For the first time, Corrin focused enough, through the shroud of darkness, to really look at the bed; she had been so fixated on Elise’s face that she hadn’t looked there. What her eyes revealed was the sight of blankets kicked to the foot of the bed, and Elise’s riding trousers lying in a tangled heap beside her. Come to mention it, it looked like Elise had changed into her nightgown, which… Corrin was uncertain as to what she understood less: how she had gone so long without noticing that, or why Elise had packed a nightgown when they had expected to sleep in rougher conditions than really allowed for nightgowns.

Corrin brushed the back of her hand against Elise’s brow, finding it just the same as it had been when Elise’s fever started to go down. At least she didn’t feel like she had gotten any worse. “I can open the shutters for you,” she offered. “Would that help?”

With a grateful nod, “Yes, please.”

The hinges on the wide-slatted wooden shutters hadn’t been oiled any more recently than the hinges on the door, and the high, decrepit screeches Corrin was met with as she opened the shutters over the chamber’s two windows in turn made her wince. They sounded like the noise one of the mousers in the Northern Fortress had made after jumping from too high a ledge and breaking his leg on the landing.

Though the day had been warm, warmer than nearly all of the days Corrin had known in the Northern Fortress, that sticky warmth had given way to a damp, refreshing coolness come the setting of the sun. Corrin breathed deeply of it, tasting a (maybe) nearby smell of cooking meat with a pang of hunger. Anything to banish that stale air from the room.

“How does that feel, Elise?”

Elise paused, nibbling on her lip. Then, she shrugged, and the look of misery on her face was unmistakable despite the gloom that shrouded this room. “I can’t feel it from here.” She flopped back on the pillows, an infuriated sigh tearing from her mouth. “I guess I’ll just try to fall asleep.”

Corrin bit down on her own lip, wincing when her teeth, sharper than Elise’s would have been, punctured the skin and a bead of copper hit her tongue. “I… think I saw a staircase that goes up to the roof. The breeze must feel wonderful up there.” And there would be a wonderful view of Macarath from the roof, though Corrin’s desire for a better look at the city was at best secondary to Elise’s need for sleep.

“That sounds nice.”

Elise clambered out of bed, moving like her limbs were weighted down with lead, her loose hair flowing over the pillows like water down one of the brooks Corrin had seen on their way here. The smile she flashed up at Corrin was fond, and tired. “Lead the way, big sister.”

As they made their slow, winding way towards the roof, a cloud passed over Elise’s face. “I still can’t believe we missed your birthday,” she grumbled.

Corrin smoothed the slightly mussed hair on the back of her head—not that Elise’s fine, straight hair needed much smoothing. It was as soft as silk under Corrin’s hand. “You didn’t miss my birthday, Elise. You were right there with me.”

“But we couldn’t have a party,” Elise argued, shaking her head choppily. She hopped up another few steps and huffed. “And Leo and Xander weren’t there. We can’t have a party if everyone’s not there.”

How would her mother have wanted to celebrate her nineteenth birthday, if she had lived and Corrin had remained in Hoshido? How were birthdays celebrated in Hoshido? Corrin’s voice wavered slightly as she pointed out, lightly, “We still have Leo’s birthday at the end of the month. Perhaps Leo and Xander will have reunited with us by then.”

Mercifully, Elise seemed not to notice anything amiss about Corrin’s tone. “I hope so.” She managed a wink at Corrin that Corrin only just caught in the gloom of the staircase. “But don’t think _you’re_ getting out of a party. The moment we get back home, I’m throwing you the biggest party ever.”

They were nearly at the top of the stairs, now, and Corrin could barely make out Elise’s face as she stared quizzically down into it. “Whatever for?”

A weak giggle met the question. “Because I love you, silly, and you’re having a hard time.” She tilted her head slightly. “Azura, too. When’s her birthday?”

Another sick swoop of Corrin’s stomach, hot and hard as a stone. “Oh, Elise, we’re not having a hard time.” Corrin prayed the darkness would hide her face. “We’re just—“

Corrin’s hand found the knob of the door at the antechamber at the top of the stairs, and the sight that greeted her upon opening it stopped the words in her mouth.

She hadn’t had a chance to properly drink in the sight of Macarath when they had arrived. She had had far too many other things to focus on to really _look_ at Macarath, and she’d been shut up in the villa since the end of the battle. And oh, she could imagine it was an impressive sight by daylight, but at night…

Lanterns. There were so many lanterns lit, shining gold and red and purple and blue, hazy stars to light up the sprawling city. Corrin couldn’t see too many people walking the streets—many of them would likely be cleaving to their homes for some time—but there were more lanterns being lit with each passing moment, illuminating shops and houses painted gold and green and warm brown, with the occasional ochre-orange standing out amidst the masses of other colors. Little plums of whitish-gray smoke rose from chimneys that jutted from flat roofs. There were objects on those roofs that swayed gently in the breeze; Corrin couldn’t quite make out what they were, but she thought that they might have been plants set in large pots. A soft mist was rolling in from the east, tossing the edges of the city in a darkling sea. The last light of twilight, violet shot with blood, washed over the city from the west. And the roof of the royal villa, itself set at the summit of a tall hill, provided the perfect vantage point to drink it all in.

“Macarath looks so pretty at night,” Elise breathed.

Beside her, Corrin could only nod. All she wanted was to race back down the hill and explore every last inch of Macarath until it had no more secrets left to yield. Oh, the allure of new places.

Corrin and Elise sat down, leaning against the exterior wall of the antechamber. The breeze on the roof seemed more to Elise’s liking. She tucked herself tightly under Corrin’s right arm, setting her head on her sister’s shoulder and turning her face to the wind.

They couldn’t stay there all night. Obviously, they couldn’t stay there all night. They’d have to go back inside eventually; the others would start to worry about them if they stayed up here long enough to be missed. But a few minutes wouldn’t hurt, surely.

A few minutes to breath the cool air, and just try to forget their cares.

“There’s a…” Elise’s face scrunched up as she drowsily searched for her words “…a waterfall I wanted to show you, once Father let you out of the Northern Fortress.”

“Oh?” Sitting down, it was harder to see the city past the lip of the roof. Corrin could make out a narrow strip of rooftops, and a kaleidoscopic haze of colored lights. “What is it like?”

“It’s the Quicksilver Falls, in the south.” Elise waved a hand in the air, her wrist decidedly limp. “It’s…” She pursed her lips, or at least, Corrin thought that was what she was seeing. “I don’t wanna spoil the surprise.”

“Well, you can show it to me when the war is over.” If the war was ever over. If they were both still alive when it was over.

“That sounds good.” Elise’s voice pitched high and sweet and so very, very tired. “Let’s go there when the war’s over. We can take Azura, too. I bet she’s never seen it.”

If Azura was comfortable in Nohr by the time the war was over, if the war was ever over and they were all alive when it ended, that did sound like a good idea. They could all take a vacation together, and just be a family again, the way they had been when her siblings visited the Northern Fortress.

The sky was turning darker, from violet-blue to indigo to something close to black. The sky was clear (Corrin was glad; a night sky obscured left her foundering), and the stars were starting to sparkle into life. Corrin dreaded the question hovering in her mouth, and yet she saw nothing for it except to ask: “Elise… When you said earlier that you had seen Gunter… what did you mean by that?”

“Hmm?” Elise’s voice was thick with sleep. “When did I… say that?”

Corrin’s heart was already sinking. “Earlier, just after we had given you your medicine.”

“Oh, Corrin.” Elise shifted her weight, so that she was leaning more heavily against Corrin than before and her head was at a slightly lower angle. “That was just a fever dream.” She yawned. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s…” She didn’t want to let go of hope. “It’s alright, Elise.”

The burdened moments ticked by, not too many of them before Elise was sound asleep, and Corrin was left effectively alone on this flat, empty rooftop. The only sound to fill her ears was the mournful wail of the wind. Colored lights had suddenly lost their appeal; Corrin tipped her head up, instead.

When she said that night skies choked with cloud left her foundering, it wasn’t just that Corrin hated storms, nor was it that she just hated a night sky obscured. Corrin loved the smell of clean water more than anyone could, and she reveled in the scent of petrichor. After heavy rain, glistening water beads could make even the grayest, grimmest stone beautiful, and it turned Corrin’s home and the surrounding mountains and countryside into a wonderland (One she could never enjoy, only look upon). And the feeling of foundering wasn’t simply one of the feeling disoriented, of losing her sense of where the horizon was supposed to be and how high in the sky the point she had focused on was.

When the night skies were choked with clouds, Corrin was cut off from the stars.

They had been a fixture ever since she was, so long ago (after the mages or the doctors or whoever had done whatever it was they had done to make her forget all that came before), let out of Castle Krakenburg and sent to the Northern Fortress. She couldn’t have the craggy mountains. She couldn’t have the rolling hills. She couldn’t have the windswept moors. But the night sky would reveal something to her that, while more distant by far, no one could take away from her.

Corrin’s education had never included anything in the way of astronomy, or navigating by the stars, so it had been up to her to find what books were available to her, and teach herself. She was hardly unaware of her disadvantages—it was impossible not to be aware of them when she had a little brother who occasionally told stories about the horrible things amateur mages had done to themselves by accident. But study of the stars was not study of magic, and it was hardly as if Corrin could break the wheels on which the sun and the moon turned, or shatter the sphere which housed the stars*. The consequences were lighter, and had not intimidated her enough to turn her away from the books.

It helped that a few of the heroines in the stories that Corrin had read knew how to navigate by the stars; one of them, a seafarer by name of Swanhild, made her living doing such. Granted, there was some disparity between how Swanhild had conducted her navigation and what the astronomy books Corrin had read described—Corrin didn’t think that any maritime navigator she met in in real life could get away with charting a course based on a “feeling”—but the two sources satisfied different needs. One feeds the mind; the other feeds the heart.

(Life had thus far failed to be like the stories Corrin had loved. She loved them still, regardless.)

She had always wanted to travel. For as long as Corrin could remember, she wanted to travel. And yes, she had always assumed that she would travel first in the company of her family, but there might also be times when she traveled alone, and she would want to be able to tell where she was going.

The stars were other things to her, as well. A goal she had once feared she would never be able to reach. A mirror for the remoteness of her own life. Something to lose herself in, when the shadows of the world threatened to choke her with the fears they harbored.

_Let’s see. I am facing north, and in early summer, the constellations visible are…_

Corrin searched the sky, first for any clouds, and was actually a little shocked when she saw none—even the clearest nights in the Northern Fortress had seen at least a few stray clouds wandering in and out throughout the night. Then, she searched the stars, and close to the eastern horizon, she saw what she was looking for.

_There’s the Sea Serpent, rising from the water to hunt unwary sailors. The Sea Serpent is made of twenty-one stars in five coils. Now, what are their names?_

_Axalta._

_Zenaida._

_Pallas._

_Rhochirion._

The door to the antechamber opened, then fell shut with a thud.

“Oh, so _this_ is where you wandered off to.”

It took Corrin a moment to distinguish Niles from the dark that had crept up the walls of the villa with the last dying of the sun. Until he took a few steps closer, all Corrin could make out was his pale hair. Somehow, though, she had no difficulty deciphering the look on his face.

“I don’t really call it wandering off,” she retorted. “I’m still on the property, aren’t I?” Wandering off would have entailed giving in to the impulse to go exploring in Macarath. This was something else entirely.

“Tell that to your sister.” Corrin blinked in surprise when he opted to sit down on her left-hand side, a few inches away. “Lady Camilla’s tearing the house apart looking for you. Interesting, how she reacts whenever you wander out of her sight.”

Any contentment Corrin had found sitting out here fled her all at once, replaced by a mess of guilt and irritation. “Oh, no.” Corrin looked helplessly at Elise, still fast asleep (She’d always slept like a rock; Corrin couldn’t find it in herself to be surprised that the rule held, even now). How to move her? “I have to—“

“I would wager we have ten minutes before someone else thinks to check up here.” Niles craned his neck to look at her properly; when his gaze fell on Elise, he pursed his lips. “Though she may gain speed if she realizes Lady Elise isn’t in bed, and put the lash to the others to urge them on. Oh, well.”

After a moment, Corrin found herself trying to come to the same conclusion: oh, well. She… she really did not want to make Camilla worry. When Camilla said that she was worried about her, Corrin saw no reason to take it as anything but the truth, and that worry wasn’t anything Corrin wished to ignite. But she needed space. She could take care of herself—certainly, she could do so for a few hours in safe territory, at least—and Camilla was going to have to accept it one day.

She wasn’t ready to go back downstairs, not yet.

Neither was Niles, who seemed quite content to just sit on the roof and stare up at the sky. Between the dark and his disheveled hair, Corrin couldn’t make out much of his face, but the set of his shoulders was more relaxed than Corrin thought she had ever seen, in all the time she had known him (Which wasn’t very long in the grand scheme of things, if she was being honest, but still). Rare sight, certainly.

But there was a recent conversation swimming through the soup of Corrin’s mind, and another seed of guilt germinating in her gut. Oh, this again, but there was no swallowing down on it: “I’m so sorry—“ and now the words were spilling out “—I shouldn’t have pried, I know that.”

And now he was craning his neck again (why _had_ he sat down with her in his blind spot; having to do that every time he wanted to look at her couldn’t possibly be comfortable), looking down at her with something close to incredulity in his face. “I told you, don’t worry over it. It’s hardly as if you did any of it yourself.”

There was a long, deep cut on his forehead; Corrin’s eyes strayed to it as she murmured, “Still.”

Niles peered at her intently, the incredulity stamped on his face taking on a sharpness, as if he didn’t trust what he was seeing or hearing. But it all seemed to flee him in one precipitous moment, and he let his head fall back against the wall, a harsh, almost giddy laugh escaping his mouth as he crossed his arms tight across his chest. “If you _really_ want to make me feel, I’ve got a few suggestions.” His knuckles were blanched white. “Probably wouldn’t do to wake the little lady, though.”

Corrin didn’t know what to make of that. A few nights ago, when they had stopped at a roadside inn and it had been Niles’s turn to watch over the horses, she had watched him get into something of an altercation with a disapproving hostler. Words were exchanged, rather choice words in Niles’s case, and when the woman had actually expressed some interest in turn, he had balked, skittered off, and spent the rest of the night behaving as though his skin might jump off of his body. Corrin really couldn’t make sense of him, sometimes.

“That doesn’t sound as if it would be comfortable on a stone roof,” Corrin said, as opposed to anything _else_ she could have said, and hoped that didn’t qualify as too forward. She really didn’t know what to do about men speaking to her that way. “I’ll have to turn you down, there.” Then again, given who she was dealing with, most things were going to sound less forward by comparison.

This time, the laugh that reached her ears was a surprised one. “It wouldn’t be, no.” Corrin watched the tension go out of his shoulders again, slowly, steadily. “Shame.”

Corrin caught herself smiling, thought she wasn’t entirely sure why.

She followed the track of the Sea Serpent, all the way up to its three-pronged head. the Swan was next, then Gisila’s Ship, then Dunstan the Swordsman. Corrin couldn’t see the constellations closer to the horizon; her position on the roof didn’t allow for that. She didn’t have the desire to tip her head up enough to see the constellations closer to the north star, didn’t want to scrape the back of her head against the wall.

“Why haven’t you done anything about that cut?” she asked softly, when she had run out of constellations to track.

“Hmm?” Niles himself didn’t tear his gaze away from the sky, leaving Corrin to look at an empty eye-socket hidden by cloth.

 _At least I didn’t ask about_ that _, too._

“The one on your face, Niles. It’s going to fester if you don’t have Jakob see to it.”

“Oh, _that_.” He shrugged. “I already cleaned the cut; I don’t think it’s going to _fester_.”

“But why not do more about it?” Corrin argued. “I mean, it looks pretty deep; I imagine it must still hurt.

What she did next was purely on impulse. How many times had she gone through this with one of her siblings after a training accident? For that matter, how many times with Jakob, or with Flora and Felicia? She’d lost count long ago. Hers was a family that was no stranger to cuts and gashes, and thus, there was no point in keeping track; it was entirely too mundane. And Corrin’s was a family that saw multiple members having to stop other members and take a closer look at the (relatively) small injuries they had accumulated from training accidents or domestic accidents. So the impulse that saw Corrin leaning over and brushing his hair away from his face so she could get a closer look at that cut, nothing about it felt unnatural to her.

That impulse had blocked off one important detail that would likely have been at the forefront of Corrin’s mind, if not for the impulse. Well, actually it was two. One: she was sitting in Niles’s blind spot. Two: given the nature of his profession, he probably dealt with people trying to attack him on a regular basis.

Grabbing her wrist and turning to stare sharply at her was probably a mild reaction, all things considered.

“Sorry,” was out of her mouth almost immediately.

And right after that came Niles letting go of her wrist like he’d been burned, the flash of anger and embarrassment across his face suppressed so quickly by a lopsided smile that Corrin couldn’t even tell who the emotions were supposed to be directed towards. “My apologies, Lady Corrin. Old habits die hard.”

“It’s alright.” His grip had been just shy of painful, more a warning than anything else, and quick enough that she could easily believe the movement had been automatic. “I imagine we’re all a little on edge, after today.”

Corrin watched as the lopsided smile on Niles’s face faded away, replaced by… She didn’t know what to make of that tired, sagging expression at all. “There is comfort to be found in familiar pain,” he said quietly. “It’s something you’ve survived before, and you know you can survive it again. I’ve found comfort in that.”

“And if the cut had been on your neck?” Corrin peered at it; it really did look deeper than should go without a healer’s assessment. “If it had been on the wrong part of your neck, it could have killed you.”

“Hmm, you’re being too literal.” But he never did explain what he had meant by it, if not what had seemed clear on first impression. Instead, Niles narrowed his eye, ever so slightly. “I think it’s time to go back inside. She—“ he pointed to Elise “—will be feeling it in the morning if she doesn’t sleep on an actual bed tonight, and _you_ are looking rough.”

“ _I’m_ looking rough? Do you have any idea how old I thought you were when we first met?”

“That’s just part of my charm.”

Corrin laughed, her face warming. “ _What_ charm? Oh, fine. Give me some space; I need a little more room with her.”

Niles obliged, but as Corrin began to heft Elise up off of the ground, he asked skeptically, “You don’t think it would be easier just to _wake_ her?”

She shook her head, grimacing as she fumbled Elise’s arms. “I don’t care to wake her just now. Elise needs her sleep too much.”

“And—“ the skepticism had been replaced by a faint note of what it took Corrin a moment to identify as concern “—does Lady Elise _usually_ sleep so deeply that she wouldn’t notice someone manhandling her?”

“Oh, yes.” The legs were even worse than the arms; so difficult to get in just the right position. “She once slept through a lightning strike that felled one of the guard towers in the Northern Fortress. Everyone for miles around must have heard it, but Elise slept on. This is nothing by comparison.”

Finally, Corrin got Elise situated, and, with some effort, stood up, carrying her sleeping sister on her back, limp arms slung around her neck, and Corrin’s hands tucked under Elise’s legs. Actually, standing up had been the easiest part, for all that Elise was a solid weight against her back.

Niles looked at the two of them as if he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or to just roll his eyes. “If you fall down the stairs, don’t expect me to catch you.”

“There won’t be any need,” Corrin said brightly. “When I exercise, I’ve often done push-ups with Elise sitting on my back. This isn’t anything new to me.” Never mind that Elise had recently, finally gotten too big and too heavy to do that anymore—with Corrin, anyways, as Camilla was much bigger than Corrin and was strong enough to still indulge Elise in this. Never mind that the longer Corrin stood there with Elise slung on her back, the more her back began to ache.

And Niles looked at her as if he didn’t quite believe her, but he shook his head and motioned towards the door. “Lead the way, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Corrin shrugged, as much as she could with her sister where she was, and smiled. Going to the roof had helped, after all. If only she knew how long it would be before her cares returned.

**Author's Note:**

> *Loosely based on historical geocentric models of the earth, sun, moon, and stars.


End file.
